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Mike Nichols, a nine-time Tony Award winner on Broadway and the Oscar-winning director of films such as "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf," "The Graduate" and "Carnal Knowledge," died on Wednesday (November 20) at age 83, ABC News said.
Nichols, whose career first blossomed with a comedy partnership with Elaine May in the late 1950s, was married to Diane Sawyer, former anchorwoman of ABC's "World News Tonight" broadcast. ABC News President James Goldston announced his death in a memo to news staff, saying Nichols "passed away suddenly on Wednesday (November 20).
Nichols was born Michael Igor Peschkowsky in Berlin, where his parents had settled after leaving Russia. He came to the United States at age 7 when his family fled the Nazis in 1939.
He grew up in New York feeling like an outsider because of his limited English and odd appearance - a reaction to a whooping-cough vaccine had caused permanent hair loss. As a University of